


Now Cracks a Noble Heart

by noodlebowl



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Elsinore, Hamlet - Freeform, Hamratio, Heavy Angst, M/M, Major Character Injury, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Quotations, Shakespearean Sonnets, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Why Did I Write This?, william shakespeare - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 00:40:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21109832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlebowl/pseuds/noodlebowl
Summary: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.But Horatio, he is pure. More of an antique Roman than a Dane, a light amongst the darkness, among the wretched and the wrong. One to draw a painful breath in this harsh world. Tell the story of the fall of the Prince of Denmark.Hamlet begs for him to not let it be the source of his own fall.





	Now Cracks a Noble Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hamlet is my favourite Shakespeare play, and I'm very fond of Hamlet himself so I wrote this. It's basically the last bit of act 5, scene 2, but written in the perspective of Hamlet as he dies.
> 
> Obvious Hamlet/Horatio references, because they're gay. Elaborate? No.

_Something is rotten in the state of Denmark._

Human beings can be so annoying. So bothersome, so irritating. They are born, they live, they die. They talk about everything when they should be talking about nothing, and talk about nothing when they should be talking about everything. Hamlet can’t speak too much on the last addition, because he knows he applies to that exact category himself. And that alone is the problem - he should, he should be able to. But he isn’t, and even if he was, he would never. Not in a million years, not to Claudius or Gertrude.

Not even to Horatio, who had been the one insisting the most out of everyone; _this is not healthy,_ he would say. _You must speak of it to someone._ And Hamlet would scoff at him in return, because Horatio would be right. And Hamlet would know it, as would Horatio himself. Still, he had refused, instead aiming to solve his own problems by his own hand - his own way. He looks now at where it has gotten him, and he sighs again.

_Something is rotten in the state of Denmark._

Claudius was perhaps the worst one of all. He was the rotten one, rotten to the core. He had been since the start, when he’d first seen Gertrude and Hamlet’s father together, a family in their prime. A King and a Queen - and a Prince, a son. First-born, healthy, pure.

Claudius was jealous, he was rotten, and so he took the family for himself. A lesser King replaced a true King, and took what wasn’t rightfully his, what would never be rightfully his. The Queen might have had accepted her place as the new King’s wife, but the Prince? He would never be his son, he had sworn it to himself. And he continued to, every night, every morning. Every second of every day.

_Something is rotten in the state of Denmark._

It is Hamlet, and he knows it.

He’s not exactly sure when it started, but it might have always been there, underneath his skin. All it took was a little push, a shove. A reason to go mad, a scenario that was shaped the right way. A reason to loose his mind and himself, along with the people around him.

Claudius had murdered his father, he had poisoned him, and the same father had later come back to convince Hamlet to murder Claudius. Hamlet had to honour the family, honour the dead, and seek revenge. Already then, Hamlet had lost his mind - a part of it, at least. He had begun fooling everyone, convincing them into believing he was mad, and he might have even managed to convince himself along with them. The planned deception suddenly became the harsh reality, and now here he lies, clutching an already seeping wound from the envenomed rapier of Laertes.

Laertes, who lies fifteen feet from him clutching an identical wound, but with cold hands. Dead hands. He had already been sent to his maker, and Hamlet is next. He is aware of his own mortality, he always has been, but as he lies here on cold stone in Horatio’s arms - warm arms, a drastic contrast to his own, his own pale arms that are fading in warmth and of life - it begins to sink in even further.

_Now cracks a noble heart._

Horatio is crying. Hamlet can feel it, but he can’t hear it. All he hears is silence, the eternal white noise of the afterlife - or at least the verge of it. He knows not where he is going, or where he will end, or if he is even going anywhere at all. Heaven and hell, all of it seems irrelevant while he lies here, blood somehow barely visible against inky layers of clothing. If God was real, would he have let this happen? Was this all part of some elaborate plan? Hamlet isn't sure any God would let this tragedy play out. The loss of a family, of Denmark's family. But perhaps it was what they all deserved. Perhaps the death was for the greater good.

_Good night, sweet Prince._

Hamlet can’t help but think of his mother, of Gertrude, and of Claudius. The two of them are dead as well. Claudius dropped dead from the same rapier that struck Laertes, the one that struck Hamlet as well. His mother had fallen from the poison that he was meant to drink himself, the poison that Claudius had prepared. The same poison that he might have used for his father.

Hamlet scoffs. How poetic of Claudius; to murder the Prince like he had murdered the King.

_Something is rotten in the state of Denmark._

Perhaps it was all of them, all along, feeding into each other’s madness and pushing each other off the ledge, into death, one by one. One after another. Hamlet thinks of Ophelia, of running water and strong currents. Of flowers and droplets, of cold fingertips and pale skin. He thinks of his own doing, of his madness that inflicted her, sent her into her own.

Hamlet thinks of Ophelia, and looks at Horatio, Horatio who continues to cry. Who begs for angels to sing, to sing Hamlet to his eternal rest. Who shakes, anticipating a life without Hamlet in it, who considers refusing, considers following Hamlet and embracing death alongside him.

But what of it matters? If Horatio did ever hold Hamlet in his heart, he will live on to tell his story. No matter how mad or how ludicrous. Horatio, such a wounded name. Perhaps Horatio was the only sane one of them all, the only one who truly deserved to live. It’s only fitting that he is surviving, Hamlet thinks.

_Something is rotten in the state of Denmark._

But Horatio, he is pure. More of an antique Roman than a Dane, a light amongst the darkness, among the wretched and the wrong. One to draw a painful breath in this harsh world. Tell the story of the fall of the Prince of Denmark.

Hamlet begs for him to not let it be the source of his own fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading - leave a kudos, comment, bookmark. Let me know what you think.


End file.
